The day that Carol and I sold our previous house, we set up a whiteboard in the living room and listed the items we'd wanted to do with the first house, but ran out of money.

A whole-house generator was the 3'd or 4'th item on the list.

While we were working on this list, the power went out, and the generator moved to the top of the list.

I think it's the only item on the list that we actually did.

Some twelve years later, that generator has become so obsolete that there aren't any tech's capable of working on it. Not even with phone calls to the Generac support lines.

A technician spent several hours working on my generator last week and the only success was diagnosing that the generator's battery wasn't getting charged, and maybe a wire wasn't connected right.

I dragged the battery to the garage and charged it with my car-battery charger, and now the generator will run for a while at least.

A week later, the generator repair place sent over their most senior tech, and he actually knew what he was doing. It seems that along with being an Artifact of Ancient Civilization, my transfer switches are hooked up differently from most because I've got a "normal" house circuit and a "reduced rate" feed for the geothermal. The two circuits and two transfer switches is enough to confuse the guys who learned the hookups by rote and don't really know what's being done.

This week's tech knew what wires were what and what they should be connected to and why. He installed the brownout-protection switch that the previous tech identified as "incompatible", and everything works the way it's supposed to.

The big news this week is that Caz had his annual checkup and he's a healthy puppy. He was incredibly good at the vet's. He sat still for them to draw blood even though it took them three pokes.

The fact that he got a treat after each failed poke might have influenced his behavior.